Gingrich

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

Yglesias says several true things about this here. I want to highlight an obvious but sad irony: many US Muslims are immigrants who came to the US for all sorts of reasons including greater liberty than in the countries they chose to leave. Imagine, just for a moment, how this sounds.

“We want to expand our masjid.”
“Not until Saudi Arabia…”
“That’s why I left there and came here. Asshole.”

or

“I’m actually from Pakistan. That’s a totally different country. Asshole.”

or even

“I was born in Brooklyn, wtf does this have to do with Saudi Arabia? Asshole.”

A true idea man! I know he’s just posturing, but could we get a slightly less idiotic pose?

Update: Oy, check this out. “The audacity of jihad,” an ad by the National Republican Trust PAC. I’m starting to get a little bit worried.

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33 comments

The trick with Newt is to figure out which basic principle you hold near and dear he happens to be traducing at the moment and then reason logically from that. In this case, I think the logic of the argument proceeds from a sense that gestures of inclusion are only meaningful insofar as they get something for us, a very realpolitik understanding of tolerance, in which it is, at best, a bargaining concession and no more. And since “they” aren’t allowing us to Christianize them, why should we let them Islamize “us”? (which, in turn, hinges on the us being Christian, but then we already knew that, right?).

The problem with trying to come up with a snarky analogy that begins, “Taking Saudi Arabia as your model for religious liberty is like…” is that the phrase is more appropriate in the back half of whatever tortured analogy we might come up with. Letting students grade their own effort is like, etc.

But seriously. The way to avoid the loss of religious liberty due to creeping Islamofascism is to.. beat them to the punch! What an asshole.

It’s not like Gingrich has ever been a model of good sense, but it seems like he recognizes how irrelevant he is in 2010 and he’s trying to build some political capital by out-Palining Palin. He’s Bachmannizing himself.

I sometimes wonder how much the general (and true) perception, among members of the media etc., that much of what politicians say is completely full of crap, undermines the level of political discourse. Certain craptacular utterances aren’t called out because “that’s just how the game is played.” Gingrich is an established figure, so he gets to say utterly stupid things without anyone grilling him on it, in part because he gets a pass on account of he didn’t really mean it.

The other Islamophonic point that should be made more explicitly is that there are a lot of Muslims who don’t at all like the Saudi government. I’ve heard this sentiment a couple of times: “I want to make Hajj, but I don’t want to go to SA because I don’t want to give them any of my money.” We agree, they’re assholes! But wtf? They never ask me about synagogues.

Do yourself a favor and avoid the comments on this issue over at Jihad Watch.

The calmer elements there talk about how they could prevent the building of the mosque by splattering pig’s blood over the site, while others are talking optimistically about the likelihood that someone would bomb the mosque.

Back to brother Gingrich, he is, deliberately of course, missing the point of New Yorkers’ opposition to the mosque, while exploiting it for his own aggrandizement. Palin, on the other hand, identifies straight up with that opposition, saying the mosque “stabs hearts,” or in other words is in bad taste.

Like Orson Welles in “A Touch Of Evil,” Newt’s future is all used up. Palin, however, seems to be getting better at this stuff, which many here may wish to take as a warning.

I don’t get why the left doesn’t own this thing on Federalism grounds. For instance: why doesn’t anybody ask Palin or Gingrinch whether the Governor of New York (or Mayor of New York City) should be telling Alaskans what to do with their building codes? I might be missing something, but I see this complete hypocrisy on federalism as a perfect opportunity to attack from the left. After all, the local zoning board was unanimous in welcoming the project. Making it all about NIMBY, eminent domain (i.e.: why should anybody – the government, outsiders, etc. tell these local land owners who can and can’t build?), and federalism and you can really slam them.

You can really slam them in a way that wins a debate point but changes absolutely nothing, I predict. Of course it’s ridiculous and unprincipled, but it’s a two minute hate. More anti-masjid news here.

Palin, however, seems to be getting better at this stuff, which many here may wish to take as a warning.

Her base and her media enablers may adore here, but Palin doesn’t have any future in national politics. At all. Her favorability rating sinks with every single poll and now hovers at 36%, while 71% of the public thinks she’s unqualified to be president.

Charges of hypocrisy tend not to fare well, but you’re right, it’s weird for a small-government conservative to claim that the zoning board deciding on behalf of people who live in New York and presumably were the most affected by 9/11 and who will be most affected should there be future attacks, should defer to the wishes of people who would fear to travel to New York, what with all the attacked joggers and terrorists and crime and hipsters.

Gallup two weeks ago, Palin had a 44% favorable, 47% unfavorable rating. Among Republicans, 76% favorable, well first among Republican presidential wannabes, including Gingrich. This, as she gets more and more (and far better managed, and lucrative) exposure.

The high Republican number brings to mind P.J. O’Rourke’s comment about Bill Clinton’s amazingly high ratings during the Lewinsky/impeachment festival: “Hell, he should hump Buddy [the First Labrador] on the White House lawn and go for a hundred.” Even if they don’t think she’s qualified to be president, there’s some serious love going on there.

I don’t know if Palin wants to be president and on balance I doubt it. This new career is more likely about money and power and influence and ego and money and more money. Whatever, she’s getting better at it, which could lead to her being taken seriously, and that is a prospect to be taken seriously.

Her popularity is just infinitely depressing to me. And frightening. It’s funny how the start of the Obama presidency made me think that the country was better than I’d thought but the second year is convincing me that it’s actually much worse.

Go to Pollster-dot-com and look at the bigger polling picture. Gallup is an outlier. Five polls have been taken since then, and they all have Palin coming in with mid-30s favorable ratings and low-50s unfavorable.

And if the mid-30s still seems too high for your comfort, Google “crazification factor” and see what the baseline is.

Anyway, just counting the polls that were conducted after that Gallup-USA Today one came out: YouGov has Palin’s approval rating at 37% favorable, 51% unfavorable; Quinnipiac has it at 35% unfavorable, 49% unfavorable; Politico has it at 39% favorable, 53% unfavorable; Bloomberg has it at 33% favorable, 55% unfavorable; and PPP has it at 37% favorable, 52% favorable.

I still don’t think it’ll ever happen, but if you’re a Democrat, you should be hoping Palin gets the nomination.

the economic fundamentals do most of the explaining of election outcomes

Right, and as the economy has continued to languish, her stock has steadily gone down, not up. This isn’t helping her at all.

Remember, George W. Bush — another folksy Western governor with little experience and lots of “regular folks” charm — was only plausible as a candidate in 2000 because the economy (and foreign policy) weren’t concerns for most Americans. If we’d had serious problems to confront, he wouldn’t have squeaked in.

If the economy is still in the doldrums in 2012, then the Republicans will rally around someone who can effectively (to their base, at least) claim a record of job creation and/or tax cutting and/or budget cutting. Romney will run on his private sector experience, even though he cut jobs at Bain (and if Carly Fiorina can run on her disastrous record at HP, any businessman can), while Pawlenty (and God forbid Christie) will run on a record of belt-tightening as governor. Empty suits like Thune will make the tax cut case.

Yglesias is right that economic factors will be determinative, but if that’s the case, Palin doesn’t have a chance. I think the Tea Party momentum is going to burst when the 2010 midterms don’t give them the results they expect — darlings like Angle and Paul are looking more and more like losers — and they’ll turn more and more to infighting (witness the TPE v. TPF fight right now).

That’s actually another reason we’d all be better off focusing on 2010 rather than 2012. The conditions for the latter election will be set by the former. Stop worrying and start working. Odds are good there’s an embattled House Democrat near you.

I should add — another obvious way in which 2010 sets the stage for 2012 is that if the Republicans retake the House, we’ll certainly see (1) endless investigations on topics so minor it’ll make the Gingrich era investigations look tame (and sane) by comparison (Bachmann has already said this is “all” they’d do), (2) impeachment proceedings resulting from one of these (no, there’s no real grounds, but several congressmen like Issa are already insisting upon it) and (3) a bloodletting of the reforms Obama’s already passed through a refusal to fund them properly, which will make the president’s accomplishments look meaningless come 2012.

I think the odds are very good that the Democrats retain the Senate but the House — which really matters here — could well be up for grabs. Seriously, folks, let’s get moving.

I had to read his dissertation, which is a charming diatribe on the wonders of the Belgian’s colonial education system in the Congo: paternalism. Despite this system only providing the vast majority of Congolese with a sixth-grade education (boys were trained as laborers, girls as domestic servants), Gingrich found it to be a wonderful way of preparing those backward souls for participation in the modern world.

I don’t believe for a second that Palin or Gingrich a give rat’s arse about Islamic centers, sacred ground zeroes, or religious freedom in Saudi Arabia. This is about recognizing that there are two Americas: those who can distinguish between the various kinds of Islam out there, and those who can’t. Palin and Gingrich want the support of the latter group; they know that the people these people most resent are “elites” who are always saying “things are more complex than that,” or they’re invoking abstract principles, or whatever. This is just what we saw from Nixon and the hard-hats, or from McCarthy earlier, neither of whom actually believed working-class ethnics should be running the country or that the United States Army was riddled with communists. It’s the result of a political decision to court the votes of the resentful, and it’s necessitated by the fact that, since the 1930s, this has been a more-or-less-New-Deal country (as Reagan and George W. Bush found out), which has no interest in embracing a Republican-led return to laissez-faire.

Charlieford, Actually, the US looked on with indifference as Clinton took an ax to the New Deal. From Reagan onward, chunk by chunk, the New Deal has been stripped away, both in terms of funding, and
in any shared concept of “the common good.”

I suppose it’s a matter of glass half full or glass half empty. The general support for “more-or-less-New-Deal” sorts of entitlements–Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, regulations of various kinds–remains relatively strong. Certainly stronger than the Republicans would like. I think you’re right about the notion of a “common good,” however. It’s never been strong in the US, and even the New Deal wasn’t a high-tide of enthusiasm for such notions. Its programs trafficked more on a presumed social contract in which those who regard themselves as “the producing classes” were owed some kind of minimal security by the state. When we try to expand the notion of a common good to those who haven’t historically been accepted within that circle, you run into difficulties. As FDR knew very well when it came to issues such as civil rights.